


The Man with the Purple Umbrella

by VonDew



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Drabble, Drarry, Fluff, M/M, Muggle AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-29
Updated: 2013-07-29
Packaged: 2017-12-21 19:06:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/903796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VonDew/pseuds/VonDew
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Draco Malfoy works in a coffeshop. One day, a man with a purple umbrella walks in, and Draco's life change forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Man with the Purple Umbrella

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks again, MissSnakeyBoots x

The man with the purple umbrella walked into the coffee shop.

The purple umbrella was one of the larger types, frilly, closed and dripping from the rain outside. An expensive type and it was worn down at the frills, but the bright purple colour hadn’t paled in the least.

The handle of the umbrella was dark wood, ebony or black-oak perhaps, and looked shiny like the umbrella had just been bought yesterday or was polished every day. The handle was of normal thickness, which made the owner’s long fingers hold it without much effort.

And then, of course, there was the man holding the umbrella.

Or rather, dragging it along across the dirty floor in the store like this wasn’t a particularly nice umbrella, which it was.

He had way-farer glasses but his scene haircut covered most of them. His hair was pitch black while the fringe that cut across his eyes was emerald green and matching the piercing eyes beneath the glasses perfectly. His face was smooth and pale, his eyebrows plucked and his cheekbones strong. His nose was perfectly sized and he had snakebite piercings beneath his plush lips.

His clothes were black and looked steam-punkish - at least to Draco’s untrained eyes. He wore muddy punker boots that hit the umbrella now and then, showering it with mud, which seemed to disappear from it immediately, as if the umbrella was magical. The man ruffled his free hand through his hair, black spiked bracelets showing and scars on top of his left hand. It looked like letters, but Draco wasn’t quick enough to read what they said. All in all the man looked like he was in his late twenties, a few years older than Draco.

A cough brought Draco’s attention to what he should be doing. The man stood in front of him, and he had almost forgotten why he was there. It was just… he had been so distracted by the stranger, and how out of place the umbrella had looked with someone like him.

The stranger seemed gruff and impatient, scratching his sharp nails across his unshaven cheek and squinting at him.

“Hello and welcome to the finest coffee shop in Bridgend. What can I do to help you sir?”

The stranger’s eyebrows lifted further and Draco felt stupid for the words the store-owner had him say every time someone walked in.

“’ _The finest in Bridgend’_ My, my, isn’t that a bit…arrogant?”

Draco felt himself blushing, cursing himself. Of course this stranger was attractive, but it had nothing to do with him and he didn’t care what this stranger thought.

He didn’t.

Really.

“It’s what we’re told to say, sir.” Draco continued awkwardly, not knowing why he was telling the eccentric-looking man all this. He reasoned to himself that it was because you were supposed to be kind to the customer, and if this customer wanted to spend two hours picking out what he wanted to drink, Draco didn’t care.

He got paid anyway.

“Is that so?” The stranger chuckled, and Draco realised with a burst of anger that this man was mocking him, for something that wasn’t his fault at all.

“Well we are,” he continued, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice as much as he could. “The newspaper’s coffee contest crowned us the winners two years in a row in 2011 and-“ he stopped when he saw how bored the stranger was getting. “Well you asked.” He huffed in response to the silence.

“No I didn’t. I asked if it was arrogant.”

“Well it’s not arrogant if it’s true.”

“Yes it is. It’s true, but even if you win you don’t have to be a sore winner and brag about it to everyone around you,” the stranger continue, studying his sharp nails now, and Draco wondered if he’d ever stabbed someone with them. He seemed to be capable of it.

“What can I do to help you, sir?” Draco repeated, slightly irritated because this was going nowhere.

“First of all, you can stop calling me sir. I’m what, - three?-, years older than you.  Second, I’ll have a latte. Nothing fancy that takes five hours to make, with extra foam and low carb marshmallows and chocolate sprinkles on top to look like the president’s head.”

Draco couldn’t help but chuckle. He’d had far too many customers exactly like the man had just described. When he had asked and the tall stranger had replied he wanted to drink the coffee here, Draco turned around to make it.

He’d messed up orders before, but there wasn’t much to mess up with a latte, and he delivered it to the man only a minute or two later.

“Thank you, Draco” the stranger said and winked at him, walking over to sit down at a table.

Draco frowned and stared after him for a while, wondering how this man had known his name. Too late he realized he was wearing a nametag and was being ridiculous. He began washing the counter instead of thinking.

But what had that wink meant?

A slam of a door made him look up sharply, and he realized the stranger had left the coffee shop, his empty cup standing on the table and looking out of place, just like the man that had just been there with his purple umbrella and…

The umbrella was still here.

Draco rushed over to the table, looking at the cup. Nothing else left there, not a phone number; nothing. Well, he reasoned with himself, he had been an idiot to think the handsome, dark stranger would leave his number there for him, but he had seen it been done with the other baristas now and then; people leaving their number under the cup.

He lifted the cup, searching around, still nothing. He could hear the other man behind the desk that he had never particularly liked laughing at him. Of course it was far too obvious what he was searching for, though this wasn’t what it looked like.

He wanted to deliver the umbrella back. The thought hit him hard and it wouldn’t let go. He felt like he needed to deliver it back now; and if he was going to catch up with the stranger he had to hurry.

He yelled an excuse over his shoulder to the other barista, later not even sure what he had said, and he ran out of the door, the umbrella with him.

It was raining heavily and the stranger must have realized that he had left the umbrella by now, but perhaps not where, and maybe he wouldn’t come back to check. Draco panicked inwardly, looking in every direction.

Hadn’t that been something? A hint of black, punk-looking clothes rounding the corner? No…it had to be just his imagination. He bit his lip, before sprinting after; he didn’t have anything else to go from.

His high-heeled boots seemed like a bad idea now as he stepped in a deep puddle and soaked the bottom of his skinny-jeans. It hadn’t been raining this heavily when he had left for work this morning, and it had seemed more important to style his hair correctly and get the colour of his jeans to match his black denim jacket, than to stay warm.

He wondered about opening the umbrella, but it somehow seemed disrespectful and it would also make running a lot slower, so he settled on carrying it in his hand.

He rounded the corner and ran up the street, past a few cabs and into the streets between some cars as the pavements were crowded with people. It went faster. Car horns honked and people shouted but he couldn’t seem to care, and he tried to ignore the doubt at the back of his mind that perhaps it hadn’t been him. _Perhaps he didn't have any means of finding him at all, and the eccentric, mysterious stranger was out of his life forever._

He was sure he had seen him again now, over by the newspaper stand that seemed to be drowning in the rain. Draco stopped by it after looking around. Damn, the man was gone again. What was his hurry?

“Did you see where that man went?” he panted to the newspaper salesman, out of breath. “The one with the green fringe and the glasses?”

The man frowned a bit, before pointing ahead down the street. “That way. I think he went left.”

“Thank you! Thank you so much!” Draco yelled over his shoulder as he kept running, trying to push out of his mind what would happen next. Where was this stranger going? Perhaps it was home, to some apartment he’d never find, and if he did…what if there was someone else there?

He stopped dead in his tracks, trying to clear his mind. What was he doing, really? Chasing after some stranger just because he seemed hot and mysterious and _different_ , everything Draco had wanted to meet some day, _everything he wanted in his life right now?_

But what if he found the man, and he opened the door to find him along with children and a wife or a girlfriend? A guy like him couldn’t be single, there was no way…and even if he was, why would he go for someone like Draco?

Boring, dull, mainstream and working in a coffee bar to try and pay off the debt on his own apartment? No. There was no way it would happen…

 _But what if there was?_ A tiny voice in the back of his head spoke up. _And you’re wasting this one opportunity to find love that you’ve looked for for so long, by standing here and **worrying**?_

That’s it, Draco thought, and continued sprinting down the street. There was no way he would give up without a fight. He rounded the corner again, to the left, and past the theatre.

A black and green head on the other side of the road, just by the apartment building complex. No. No, shit, shit, shit. If he locked himself in there Draco wouldn’t find him without ringing about two hundred doors. Shit.

He ran over the road, careful not to harm the umbrella. “Hey!” He yelled. “Hey, wait!”  
No reaction. People’s heads turned, but there was no way to catch up with the stranger. There wasn’t even a _name._

Draco ran out in the street and across it, and before he knew it he was there, tugging on his jacket as if to stop him, even as he was still searching for his keys.

Draco was out of breath, and trembling, having just ran many kilometers without thinking about it, but at least the stranger wouldn’t _leave_ now.

“H…hi,” Draco panted, looking up at him. The man was taller than he had expected, and looked even more beautiful up close. His hair more messy because of the rain, smokey-eyes running down his cheeks, rain dripping down his cheeks. He was a complete mess, and yet…wow.

Draco bit his lip when the man lifted his eyebrows expectantly.

“U-umbrella…” He croaked, holding it out before remembering how to use his voice properly. “You forgot your umbrella…thought I should give it back.”

The perfectly sculpted eyebrows rose higher now, and Draco suddenly felt incredibly stupid and small. Why had he come all this way just to give a stupid umbrella he obviously didn’t even care for back to him? Perhaps it wasn’t even his, maybe it was his sisters, and somehow that ruined a bit of it. He had been exciting because Draco had thought it was _his_ , even if it didn’t go along the rest of him; that had been the good thing.

Eccentricity. Creativity.

A perfect match to the artist Draco wanted to be once his debts were paid.

“You came all this way, or ran it seems,” He said when as he took a look at Draco’s muddy jeans and the rest of him.

Oh god, he must look like shit.

Draco closed his eyes, trying to shut the world out. This would end so, so badly. “- all the way here. Just to return my umbrella?” his voice was amused. “I don’t know many who would’ve done that.”

Draco opened his eyes hesitantly to find the other man smiling. He thought it was a good thing. Maybe he thought Draco was creative and new - and everything _he was_ , everything Draco _wanted to be_. _And wanted to be with_.

“Thank you.” There was feeling in his voice that Draco hadn’t predicted. Perhaps he did care about the umbrella after all, it sounded like…like he cared a lot in general.

“Y…you’re welcome,” Draco stammered, still not able to realize what was happening.

“Wanna come inside? Change your clothes maybe? Or do you…have to get back to work?”

“I…” Draco broke off. He had just skipped a lot of his work to go running after some stranger; it would be madness to go back to work once he had found him. Things would work themselves out tomorrow; they always did. “Sure, yes, thank you, I’d love to come inside,” he babbled.

A smile broke across the man’s face, making him seem much friendlier and kinder than before. “Great.” He found his keys and opened the door.

As he opened the door to his apartment, and to so much more, Draco realized, Harry turned around and looked at him with sparkling, kind eyes.

“My name is Harry by the way.”

 

 


End file.
